Psalms of Lovers
by honeyblood
Summary: [Bulma-centric; mirai-Trunks timeline] She will never love any other person quite the way she loves him and that kills her.
1. In Memoriam

**Title: **Psalms of Lovers

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything even remotely related to DBZ

**Spoilers:** Well, if you don't already know the thing about future-Trunks, Gokou and the Androids, I suggest that you pretend you do. Messes with some cannon Cell things.

**Warnings: **If anyone is squicked at the idea of Bulma/Buruma with someone other than Vegita (who I love and adore), then you might not want to read. Also, I am totally screwing with a few of the characters--don't bother saying so-and-so is OOC or that so-and-so didn't do that/wouldn't say that, because I did it on purpose. For the most part. You know, artistic liberties and all that.

**Foreword:** FanFiction-dot-Net is messing with my formatting. Makes me mad, and if anyone cares to see how this should look, it's saved in my LiveJournal memories.

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**I. In Memoriam**  
  
_Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,  
Before I knew thy face or name;  
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame  
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;  
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,  
Some glorious nothing I did see.  
  
**"Air and angels," John Donne**_

* * *

_If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?_

* * *

Though she is young she knows that summer ends and so does love. But the summer is not over yet.  
  
And she is definitely not in love.  
  
So after they have gathered the balls and wished and wasted the wish and started again, there is sun and clouds and _blue_. It billows around the children and they revel in it, because regardless of what they'd done summer is still their natural element, like fish and water or birds and wind. They revel in the purity of season though these children are no longer really children, having all seen and done far too much to retain the vestiges of childhood's innocence.  
  
But she doesn't care because she is selfish and young, though still older then _him_.  
  
And it's nice, in a way, to have someone she can just hold and not worry what he's thinking about her, or not thinking about her (as the case may be), and he's grown so quickly it's like she went to sleep one night only to wake and find a beanstalk in place of a bean. He's taller than she is (almost) and gangly only _not_, because he is one of those sickening people who grow perfectly proportioned: all their arms and legs and torso always fitting together better then they should.  
  
The romantic in her wants to find something to equate him too because the mathematician in her needs to reason out _why_ looking at him makes her feel like she's looking into the sun.  
  
But oh, what a sun it is. He is one of those boys that you just hear about; one of those boys who are sweet and good and warm, and who can be and just by being can illuminate even the simplest of things into something wonderfully grand. And one who can make even the direst of situations seem safe.  
  
She thinks that she might be able to fall in love with him--except of course he's younger than her and he's goofy and he likes _martial arts_ and he's totally not want she wants.  
  
But that doesn't matter right now.  
  
'Cause there are more important things to think of; like the sun and the sky and the sea.

* * *

This girl and this boy (who are not in love--no not even close--though entwined in dreams of hands and kisses) are tangle together like bits of ever-growing strings. She is partly awake, cheeks flushed, and thinks hazily that she might have a problem with younger men.  
  
Coherent thought is far and distant from his mind, however.  
  
Like any youth he is saturated with their combined warmth, and contentment radiated off him like light from a star. The girl might love him--or might not, because she's keeping her heart in wait for that silver-clad knight to come and sweep her away--but right now this small sphere of flesh and darkness was all that she wants.  
  
A stirring of limbs and they slide together unconsciously, hip-to-hip (for though he is the younger, he's nearly taller than she now); fitting one another like pieces of a complicated puzzle. Her lips press to his collarbone. His hand, warm and large, splays against her ribs. Her shoulder nestles under his out-flung arm. His legs twine between and around hers, ankle locked on ankle.  
  
They are inextricable from each other, and that is all right because right now it's July; a time of sun and night and heat and lovers.  
  
The still semi-conscious part of her mind thinks that this is far better than endless amounts of strawberries, but this is something that she'd never divulge awake. She draws a little closer, presses a little tighter, and kisses his neck. This is something unique to her; _he_ is something unique to her. Together, she and this boy (who are not in love, thank you very much) are some kind of new creature. Some beautiful, exotic hybrid of form and function, and she is astounded because she hadn't even considered this possibility when she'd seen the boy nearly an eon before.  
  
The boy, in return, grips her almost painfully. His thumb rubs over her skin, and he sighs in her hair. She doesn't care how long this last because something like this will never be forgotten.  
  
They are not in love--not even close to it--but it is enough.  
  
Until, of course, the summer ends and school begins again and she goes back to her classes and her family and her (sort of but _not_) boyfriend. She tries not to dwell upon the dark-haired boy and the dark-veiled nights and everything that she shouldn't want because they were never meant for each other and anyway, it had been more than enough for her. He was her friend and she didn't want him like _that_—it was just a fling.  
  
Her parents mention, during the first few months, a boy on a cloud stopping by and asking for her, but she's busy and she'll get back to him later because it's not all that important.  
  
And she actually manages to convince herself of this.

* * *

Then he gets married.

* * *

Years have a way of slipping by and making it seem like just a trick of the mind. She wakes up one day and finds that she's one of those twenty-somethings, brilliant and wasteful, with a string of failed relationships trailing behind her as brightly as a kite's streamers. When she meets him again he is married, with child. Soon to be children. And so handsome and dark and achingly _perfect_ that she can't help but fall just a little bit in love with him.  
  
Not that that's a problem, 'cause he's too good to ever even _think_ of her like that now, and she's not quite that bad as to try and seduce a married man. And, and--oh hell.  
  
She is miserable because she misses him, and misses not just his heart and his warmth, but _him_. He was her friend and she was always so horrible to him and now she can never make it up to him. She hates to admit she is anything less than perfect, but looking at him and his dark-haired beauty of a wife, and his ebony-haired sprite of a son, she's so jealous that she thinks she's going to be ill.  
  
Of course she masks it well, consummate actress that she is, and she blusters on about her own sorry love life, and the one man she'd thought she'd loved. And maybe she is telling the truth because otherwise it wouldn't _hurt_ so much to think on Yamcha, would it? And can't her fixation on her sweet oldest friend be just a reaction to her own heartache? Because she had loved him, she knows she did, does. Whatever.  
  
But then why does it feel like her chest is being shredded from the inside out as she looks at his ever-so-happy face? Why, why, why-she snorts and waves away Roshi's strange look. Why indeed? She's selfish. It's as simple as wanting something she can't--or shouldn't because she has this niggling little thought tucked away in the corner of her mind that if she really really tried to, she could make him fall in love/lust with her quite easily--have.  
  
So she takes the clearest path and ignores these odd palpitations behind her ribs and tries to be happy just for happiness' sake. Funnily enough, it doesn't work too well.

* * *

Years later, when she falls in love with Vegita, she knows immediately that it's different than what she feels for Gokou. This feeling is at once brighter and at the same time less. She knows then that she will never stop loving Gokou but that it _will_ be possible for her to be happy with someone else.  
  
Well, maybe _happy_ is an overstatement. Content, definitely. Maybe happiness will come later.  
  
Of course, she's not in love with Vegita for purely altruistic reasons; she _had_ slept with the sullen prince first because she was lonely and he was available and attractive and he was nothing like Gokou. But even so ... she had affection for the displaced man from the beginning.  
  
Right after she stopped being terrified that he was going to turn on them and kill them all. And after she stopped being furious that he was here and Gokou was _not_.  
  
And ... he reminded her (almost) of Yamcha, starting off on the proverbial wrong foot but, eventually, proving that while devious, and malicious and conniving he is actually not _all_ bad. Just mostly.  
  
When she finally lets herself fall in love with him, right after Trunks is born because anyone who could help her create something so magnificent deserved her love, she pretends that she doesn't know that Gokou disappears for a full day and returns only to be found with knuckles covered in weeping cuts and indigo bruises. Just like she pretended she didn't know that when she announced her pregnancy Gokou disappeared for a week straight and that when he returned he wasn't bloody and dirty and strangely morosely savage for days afterwards.  
  
When she falls in love with the dark prince, just as she pretends to not notice things that she should not be noticing anyway, she knows he too is trying to pretend that that nothing has changed.  
  
And it's kinda heartbreaking because she knows that even though she's sort of happy now and just a little in love, she will never get over him--despite there not being anything between them for her to get over in the first place.  
  
She will never love any other person quite the way she loves him and that kills her.

* * *

When he dies she thinks that she's dead too, for a moment.  
  
But death, she learns, like so much else in this world, is not impermeable. And when they bring him back for the first time she is so happy that she thinks she might die anyway, because there's no way in the world it's right to feel so much for just one person.  
  
Then he dies again.  
  
And again.  
  
Each time he does she feels that terrible clenching of her chest and that horrible clogging desolation rip through her throat, holding back those wails of anguish she never-ever voices. And each time he comes back--well. Joy is not the right word to use for such a feeling. She almost thinks that such jubilation can make up for the small death she experiences every time. _Almost_. Meaning, not quite.  
  
After the final death (a stupid fucking virus—it isn't _fair_), she isn't sure that her heart can take him coming back for a third time, even though she misses him so goddamn much.  
  
There is so much she wishes (now that she is wiser, older) that she had said to him.  
  
There is so much that she had wanted to explain to him, because she could remember some nights when it was just the two of them again and it was so hard to remember that he was married, and that she was living with Vegita and that--well--everything had happened.  
  
But because she was older now and (slightly) less impetuous, she does what she has always done because one of them had to be the sensible one. She bites down hard on her tongue and strangles whatever it is that she hold half-formed in her throat.  
  
She will not be the one to destroy him, though she can't say the reverse will be true of him.

* * *

_--What would you wish for?  
  
I'd wish--_

* * *

Sometime between his second and his third, and final, death, they go camping with Gohan and Trunks because Chichi is busy and Vegita doesn't care. And it is _normal_ to be invited because he is her best friend, and Gohan is closer to her intellectually than either of them would care to admit. And she is fond of the studious boy. And he reminds her of his father.  
  
_Just like old times._  
  
Oh, there is so much _wrong_ with those four words that she longs to correct. But she doesn't because there isn't a _point_ anymore. She is in love (maybe) with the flip side of Gokou's coin—the dark, twisted, strangely noble side that had tried to kill her just as many times as he'd made love to her. And she has a son. And she is _old_. And he is clueless. And he is--is--  
  
He is looking at her with a sad look in his eyes. She's never seen that look before, hasn't even known he is capable of it. He understands so much more than she, than anyone, gives him credit for. She is so stupid to think that this is normal, or to think that he doesn't notice what she feels. She is so fucking _stupid--_  
  
However, she is proud and she is cagey, and she is still older than him goddammit.  
  
_This is my life you know, finding those silly baubles and wishing you back;_ she says lightly, feeling a little weepy. _'Cause I'll do it, you know, every single time. That's what friends are for._  
  
She is gratefully that Gohan is pretending to sleep, and that her son is too young to understand. She is grateful--then--for the small fire and the shadows it casts because she knows for a fact that her chin is wobbling dangerously and if he says just one thing, just one more thing--  
  
_I missed you. Why did you leave that fall?_  
  
Fuck.  
  
So fucking plaintive and so fucking innocent.  
  
_I--_she wants to say something clever or cutting or just _anything_ to get him to leave this line of questioning. _I-I had school. And friends. And--_  
  
_--Yamcha._  
  
And there it is.  
  
The quiet bitterness in that single word surprises her. It isn't the right answer, but she isn't going to be the one to tell him. So what if she broke his childish heart? He survived. And he is better for it. She'd convinced herself of this long ago.  
  
Except it seemed _he_ hadn't.  
  
_I adored you._ Meaning he didn't any more. Except, if that is true, why is he looking at her like this? _I love her, but I adore you._ Oh god please don't do this to her.  
  
_I was just a kid. I was_ stupid--  
  
_But you knew what you were doing. I did too._  
  
He rests his arm around her waist, and she slides into the crook of his neck. It is like two long separate puzzle pieces coming to rest together. Part of her wants to divorce herself from him because this was only going to end in heartache--not that it hasn't already--but the more reptilian part of her brain wants to crawl inside his skin and curl up like a cat around the warmth of his heart.  
  
_Buruma, I--_  
  
And maybe he feels something like that too because she is sure that he is holding her just a little too tightly and just a little too closely and would it really be so bad if she just gave up and kissed him right _here--_  
  
Yes. Yes it would.  
  
But she wants this so _badly_ and she knows she can feel something unannounced trembling eagerly for release in him as well.  
  
However, she is not going to be the one to release it.  
  
Maybe he senses this resolve, or maybe she's just reading far too much into a friendly embrace, or maybe they've both just gotten wiser. Whatever the reason, he tries to smile (slightly successfully) and releases her, hand coming to rest loosely between them (slightly shakily). They both want this--whatever this is--to be all right and they both want this to just go away. Well, maybe her more so than him because she knows that he doesn't really understand the consequences because if he did then why the hell would he even think of risking any of it for someone like her?  
  
_I--And it's okay. Really. I just ... missed you, is all._  
  
It's a gargantuan effort on his part, and it is almost carefree enough. Almost warm enough. Almost truthfully enough. Too bad he isn't able to convince either one of them.

_

* * *

_

_If I die again, I don't want to be brought back. _  
  
Then I'll die along with you. _All right._  
  
_Because sometimes, I just get so tired ..._  
  
Fuck you. _I understand._  
  
_Don't just_ say _that. Mean it; I don't want to abandon anyone, but I just--you ever had that dream where it's calm and quiet, and it's just you and the sky? Well, I have that dream and sometimes it's real hard to wake up from it._  
  
I don't understand why you're doing this to me. Why not tell your wife. Or your son. Or your best fucking war-buddy. _I ... I can't promise that I won't stop someone else from bringing you back. But I promise I won't._  
  
_That's_ why _I'm asking you. To make sure that no one else does, I mean._  
  
Why're you doing this to me? I don't want to make this promise. You don't know what you're asking. _I--_  
  
_Promise me you won't let it happen.  
  
I--  
  
You're the only one I'm asking because I trust you.  
  
I--  
  
Buruma, I'm_ tired. _I want to be selfish. I don't want to be resurrected to save the world anymore._  
  
I hate you. _All right. All ... right._

* * *

The third time he dies she spends one entire day sobbing into her pillows.  
  
She cries the aching tears of one shattered alive and she cries them until her body cannot weep anymore. The morning after--with her eyes still red and mawkish--she gets up and goes into her lab. Then, with resolute precision, she picks up her mini sledgehammer systematically smashes all her gadgets and gizmos, and everything and anything that she has ever put any effort into.  
  
It's sort of pointless destruction, and she is well aware of it, because you can't wish someone back from a natural death.  
  
But that's the thing; it isn't a fucking _natural_ death. Nothing as simple as a disease should have been able to kill _him_. Gokou isn't supposed to be brought low by a heart attack, by some abnormal fluctuation of his pulmonary muscle. It's _not_ natural. Not even close to natural.  
  
And it's not _fair_ that those stupid balls should dictate what a 'natural' death is. They (_she_) needed him.  
  
So, because the dragon balls are bloody useless, she is destroying the instruments that they use to find them because there isn't a point to it anymore. And because she needs to tear apart something just the way the whole fucking universe is tearing her apart. It's a control thing; Yamcha has always called her domineering.  
  
She has always thought that was sort of unfair.  
  
But standing in the wreckage of her workroom she knows that (maybe) it isn't far from the truth.  
  
She hates that she is powerless in this. Yes, Gokou had been to one to save the world again and again and _again_, but--goddammit--she was the one who had gotten him where he was. Without her, he'd probably just be living in some god-forsaken forest playing with the animals ...  
  
But that isn't right because she knows that he would have saved the world any way because he's just that kind of man. If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. He is the kind of man that brings that out in people.  
  
Or rather, he _was_.  
  
With a shriek she lobs her hammer at the wall and, panting, spins to find something else to throw. She hates this; she hates it. She hates this subjection and this injustice and she knows that God can hear her because she's talked to him before and _he cannot do this to her.  
  
Are you done?_  
  
Sardonic and weary, her (husband? Lover? Mate?) _something_ stands in the doorway. He looks black and angry, but then again he always does so there isn't much change, and she can feel a coiling of resentment well up in her throat because how can he be so unaffected by this? How can he just not give a fuck? Gokou is dead. And he is never coming back. Not _ever._  
  
Just the thought makes her quiver, and brings on an onslaught of tears that she thought she'd finished.  
  
_No._  
  
She is not done, and she doesn't know if she ever will be.

_

* * *

_

_I'd wish--_

* * *

She never thought she'd like Chichi as much as she does.  
  
Chichi has a kind of black, savage beauty that makes her think of spice and hidden citadels and moonless nights. Her admiration of the girl had begun when Gokou--wheezing with laughter--recounted how the girl had impaled old Roshi with her blade. She'd been envious of her immediately, even though she'd been utterly confident that there was nothing to fear.  
  
And of course there was nothing to fear; the girl was just a silly girl, and Gokou was there with her. But she was a jealous girl, and these boys--Yamcha, Gokou, and even Krillin, to an extent--they are hers and not for sharing with anyone. But the older she gets, the more magnanimous she gets and she finds that she isn't able to begrudge the other woman for having the one thing that she had thrown away. She is even able to say that there is a sort of solidarity between the two, perhaps for being really the only females in the band of warriors or for being the bearers of half-blood children. So they are friends, sort of. And she prays every day that Chichi misses the little glances that she sneaks; oops, sorry--sneaked because, ha ha silly her, Gokou's _dead_ now and never coming back--at her husband.  
  
For though they are kind-of friends, she still envies Chichi. She wishes constantly (and only in the back of her head, however) that the tall dark man is gracing her bed and that the lithe, intelligent boy is learning from her, and that she is the one to run her hands through the thick dark mane of the young wife's hair.  
  
She won't hesitate to admit that she is more than a little infatuated with the entire family.  
  
And it's not that she isn't happy with her _own_, goodness no. It's just, well, she wants to see what it might have been like because if she'd been smarter and better and less of an arrogant girl, she might have been the one to give Gokou his sons and to give him comfort and rest and oh hell--she just _wants_ with a nameless aching that scares her. She wants to see what Gokou chose over her. She wants to taste what she gave him up for because Chichi has to have been worth her happiness because that had been really the only thing stopping her from begging Gokou to just take her away from everything.  
  
She likes Chichi more than she'd thought she would, but she still fucking envies her so _much._  
  
Two days after Gokou's third death she finds Chichi standing by her kitchen window, looking just as fierce and as proud as was befitting of the bereaved daughter of the Ox King, and in desperation she cups the dark-haired woman's face in her hands and kisses her. It's a selfish act, and a stupid act, and one that she repeats again and again because Chichi still tastes faintly of her husband's heavy musk and--having never tasted it before--she is afraid that she will lose him more than she already has.  
  
Chichi is a smart woman, and a lonely one, and she knows exactly why she's kissing her and Chichi knows why she's kisses her back--because they both need this.  
  
_He is gone._  
  
Chichi weeps in the frame of her hands. She is far lovelier than anyone else she has ever seen, and suddenly she knows exactly why Gokou had chosen her. This girl is a striking mix of rage and gentleness-something that she could never be. Chichi is like the earth: dark and rich and mothering.  
  
_Yes, he is gone._  
  
If Chichi is like the earth then she must be the sea. Full of dark hidden corners and selfish drowning tides. Because while she is sad for Chichi, envious of Chichi, she is also pleased, as horrible as she feels to admit it; the girl in her is sort of happy that Gokou's dead because he was _hers_ and it hurt to see him with anyone else.  
  
The worst part is Chichi knows.  
  
There is a glimmer of hate in Chichi's eyes (because a wife always knows) and the younger woman's face seems to say _now you will never have him._ Part of her wants to hit the girl because it isn't quite so simple and part of her wants to weep because it is so very true.  
  
So she kisses her again. _Silly child--I never had him._  
  
_Stupid woman, you just never knew it._  
  
This bitter retort does cause her to cry again because her heart is too full with regret and fury and want, and strangely enough together it is almost just a little better so they stay like that for a little while, clutching one another in the kitchen of the dead man's house, and together they are a little comforted.

* * *

Chichi dies in a fall.  
  
But not really because it was what happened before the fall that killed her and it was like watching Gokou die all over again. Because it wasn't suppose to happen that way. Chichi was supposed to die surrounded by extended generations of family, a happy old woman. Not an emaciated ghost. Not a shell of a girl, all glass-coloured skin and sharp bones.  
  
Not like this.  
  
It is a form of passive suicide. She sees it coming, but somehow can't bring herself to stop it. Not when her world is in disarray, and she can't stop choking up in the middle of making dinner because she suddenly remembers that the extra she's making is pointless and then it's all she can do to not breakdown right there--  
  
See, this is the difference between her and Chichi.  
  
She tries to function, even if it's just sort of piece-meal and crippled, and she carries her son and feeds her husband and works in her workroom and cries into her hands at night. Sometimes her husband, or lover, or whatever the hell he is, will come and fuck her, and she welcomes this because it's something that makes her feel. And she does love him, in a way, just as he cares for her, in a way. She's never doubted this because she knows that he would have left he if hadn't cared a little. And she has her son; her beautiful miraculous blue-eyed boy who has so much of what is good in his father.  
  
Chichi has less. Chichi has her son, but her son is a miniature of his father and looking at him frequently causes her to weep. Chichi has her house, but her house is all but empty now for her son is away, training, and her husband is dead. There is no escape for her.  
  
So Chichi just stops--stops living, stops sleeping, stops eating.  
  
She scares Gohan so badly that the boy comes to her in fits of terror and begs her in tears to _find a way to bring him back._  
  
Gohan is just a boy, and he doesn't know what he asks.  
  
He doesn't know that he makes her heart shrivel and slip into her gut, or that he makes her lock herself in her room for three hours trying not to cry and pick up her tools to do just what he asked. He doesn't know and that too makes her think of his father and then everything starts all over again.  
  
If this is what Chichi feels when she see him, sees her son-not-husband, then the younger woman has her deepest sympathy.  
  
And Gohan tries so _hard_. He does and it's heartbreaking because she can see the ending a mile away, plummeting towards them like a speeding train. When she has the time, she heads over to Chichi's house intent on making the other woman do something other than sit in silence, and sometimes she'll see Gohan there trying to cajole her into living. Always unsuccessfully. Always in tears.  
  
When Chichi dies, she dies because she stumbles and trips and falls and shatters the already fragile bones around her heart. They crumble inward, pierce her pulmonary artery and she bleeds to death internally. It's very fitting; dying of a bleeding heart. She wants to be more upset about this death; but she can't help feeling, well, sort of envious because it doesn't matter how Chichi died, just that she did. She was going to anyway, either by self-infliction or by stupidity or by accident; the dark-haired girl makes her think of lovebirds. She's heard somewhere that when one of the pair dies the other soon follows, fading away because it can't cope without it's other half.  
  
And it's sort of heartening in a way, because if Chichi felt so strongly about him, it must have been love. Yeah, so the lead in her chest can't be anything important. Because if she loves him, shouldn't she be more--  
  
_I want to die._  
  
--Upset about the whole thing? Yeah, and besides she has _responsibilities._ And then there's Gohan. No one even thought about Gohan; where is he to live? Who is to feed him? She may have liked Chichi more than she'd thought she would, but that doesn't stop the anger she feels at the woman's selfishness.  
  
So the day she learns of Chichi's death she does what any wife worth her mettle does.  
  
She cleans the house and then makes dinner.

* * *

She has lost something she has never had.  
  
The loss of it haunts her days, her nights and her waking dreams. The loss of this thing that she's never owned, never been able to buy, never been able to steal; the loss of this thing is magnificent and she learns of suffering and rage anew.  
  
_(If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?  
  
I'd wish--)_  
  
She is a selfish woman. And she is a brave woman. And she is a stupid woman. She wants what she cannot have. She loves what is not lovable. She creates what is un-creatable.  
  
And if she could have one wish, just one wish, she'd be horrible and she'd bring him back because she still can't imagine living without him even though she never really had him.

_

* * *

_

_I'd wish for time._


	2. Fait Accompli

**

* * *

Disclaimer:** See Part I.

**Spoilers: **Still the same; see Part I

**Warnings:** Still the same; see Part I. However, here the writing becomes slightly more disjointed (as if that's possible).

* * *

**II. Fait Accompli **  
  
_What thou lovest well remains,  
The rest is dross  
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee  
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage  
Whose world, or mine or theirs  
Or is it of none?  
First came the seen, then the palpable  
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,  
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage  
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee.  
  
**"Pisan Cantos, LXXXI," Ezra Pound**_

* * *

Bite you lip. Close your eyes. Ignore the living ghost sitting at the table behind you. _What do you want for dinner?_  
  
_Anything. It's fine._  
  
Pretend that your lover isn't dead, and that your love isn't dead, and that there aren't two of the horsemen gallivanting around the world. Pretend that the world is still whole and you son is still small and pretend that this is still _you_ and everything that you've lost is not gone. _Spaghetti it is then._  
  
_What? Again?  
  
Ah Trunks, don't you know that your mother makes the best spaghetti this side of the moon?_  
  
If you listen hard enough you can almost pretend that the boy behind you is him and that you are sixteen again. If you work long enough, you may be able to sleep tonight and not search for your dead lover's hand in the dark. _It's cheap. And there's lots of pasta lying around.  
  
Well _I_ like it.  
  
Suck-up.  
  
Yup._  
  
If you don't turn around you can maintain the illusion that the boy is his father, and that he's waiting for Vegita to come out to train. If you just try hard enough--  
  
Except, you know it isn't him. And part of you is glad for it, and that's why you can never really pretend.  
  
There are _differences_ now. _No arguing.  
  
We're not arguing. We're agreeing that I'm sucking-up so I can get a bigger helping than the brat here. _  
  
And it breaks your heart because you think you might love him more than you'd loved his father and you know that shouldn't be possible for too many reasons to count.  
  
And _that_ is massively fucked up.

* * *

She can count the similarities between father and son on one hand. But even so when she looks at him all she can see are _his_ dark eyes and _his_ warm smile and she wants to cry. That or wrap herself up in his arms and curl-up and die.  
  
She realizes, even while she drowns in the dark gaze and the melancholy smile, that this youth is not him. Will never be him, and even though she knows this she still longs for him.  
  
He makes her think of hearth-fires, and family, and baking bread, and death.  
  
It suffocates her.

* * *

It's the similitude that undoes her.

* * *

Everything is just slightly off-kilter.  
  
She see it in how she wakes every morning to find a sky that's just a shade too green, and a sun that's a tad less bright and to see _that_ face, but with just a few too many imperfections.  
  
Her son is a comfort to her at these times because he is a constant; he remains with her day in and day out, and he is always the same. He's a younger, softer version of his father--the flame-haired, hard-eyed prince--and she thanks god every fucking day that he hasn't taken him away too.  
  
Out of everything lost, not everything is lost. This is what she convinces herself of in the morning when it's all she can do just to get up.  
  
Not everything is lost.  
  
Trunks. Gohan.  
  
Out of everything lost--  
  
Vegita. _Gokou._  
  
Once she thought that losing him was the worst thing that would ever happen to her. As she grows older (and much older), she learns that there is no such thing as rock bottom; that there is always something worse. So she learns to take pleasure in the small things that they are granted. She begins to appreciate the fact that her home was spared, and that her son lives to sleep in the room across the hall, and that every day the familiar vestige of Gohan graces her domicile.  
  
Even if his smile is as rare as clean rain now.  
  
How does someone who looks so much like Gokou become so unhappy? When she gazes at him she wants to hold him and wipe the sadness from his cheeks and tell him it's okay, because no one ever told him that enough.

* * *

It's the aching slide of their mouths that destroys her even as it rebuilds her.  
  
She's never thought in a million years that she would be kissing him, the most mature of boys, and not the innocent man who was his father. She knows that she shouldn't be doing this because, well, for one thing she is old enough to be his mother. Older even, as she'd been older than his father.  
  
Fuck, she knows she shouldn't be doing this simply for the reason that she's not sure that she loves him the way she knows he wants.  
  
He wants a girlfriend, a wife.  
  
He looks at her with his soul in his dark eyes, and she nearly chokes because it should be someone else he's looking at like that.  
  
Because part of her still thinks she wanted to be his mother.  
  
But there is no one else, some other part of her insists, some other part that throbs for this. They are someone else, and they are it. They are now the alpha and the omega. They are the last of the circle and they must hold it.  
  
Even though she is sometimes so tired that she dreams of calm and quiet and an endlessly blue-clouded sky and not waking up.

* * *

_I had a crush on you.  
  
I think everyone knew it; I mean, I was scared of you, right, but that was because you were so ferocious and bright and pretty. You made me think of, well, everything good that I wanted to protect.  
  
So yeah, I had a crush on you.  
  
And now, well, I still think that you are the bravest, brightest, loveliest girl in the world. And I don't care if you laugh at me because I know that it's only us left. But I don't think that even if there were a hundred thousand girls left I would have loved any of them more than you.  
  
I just thought you should know. _

* * *

He loses his arm because she is too stupid and too slow.  
  
But he doesn't _die._  
  
And just for that she is able to live with her guilt because god_dammit_ she isn't ready to lose another one. So she's grateful that those stupid killing dolls are busy destroying another city, and that the area he fell in was just hot enough to solder his wound and melt the ends of his bleeding arteries together, and that the acid rain that had been hovering ominously decided to hold off until she found him--she is grateful that she found him unconscious because she did not want him to see what an utter _wreck_ he'd made her into.  
  
And this is how it happens; she finds him mostly ruined but half-alive and she grits her teeth and manages to ward off the ferryman for another catastrophe. She saves him and refuses to think that there is even a part of him that might not want to be saved. After all, that was how she lost Vegita. And Gokou. And herself. And she is _not_ going to let this boy give up. She saves him, and she puts him in the room down the hall.  
  
Sometimes she will sit and watch him, just to make sure that he is still breathing. Because some irrational part of her believes (maybe not so irrationally) that if he could he'd make himself stop breathing and just fade away. And the idea of his loss scares her like nothing has done in decades.  
  
So she saves him, and not his arm and not the world; but she saves him and that is a start.

* * *

When she wakes up and finds him curled around her in her--in their--bed, she thinks that she may have a problem with younger men.

* * *

Trunks either doesn't know or doesn't care that she is sleeping with his sempai, and that's another thing she's grateful for. 'Cause, it would be too much for her too handle if he wasn't okay with it. It would be too much like trying to face her husband (had he been? At the moment, she doesn't know or care) because for all the good in her son, he is still far too much his father's boy.  
  
And she _had_ loved his father.  
  
Now that he is gone, she can freely admit that even if she hadn't particularly liked the man she'd loved him. Maybe not as much as Gokou, and not as much as he might have deserved, but she had loved him regardless and she regrets his death with an pain that stings a brand on her heart.  
  
She wishes sometimes that she could tell him.  
  
And when she looks into Gohan's eyes she can't help but quail sometimes because she feels that, in some strange way, she is betraying the only man that had even attempted to stay with her. Then of course she'll see Trunks, bless his heart, and she nearly has a heart attack because Gohan isn't the only living ghost in her home. The only blessing is that Trunks doesn't take to dressing in his father's old uniform as Gohan does with his father's sienna gi. If he did, well, she might not survive to see sunrise.  
  
What bothers her most is just how much she actually wants the younger man. Sometimes when she's tracing her eyes over his finely scarred face, or running her fingers though the thick tuffs of his butchered black hair, or resting her ear against his thrumming heart, she'll be consumed with a want that seeps into her bones and blood and she just _aches_ for his arms to crush her to him. She'll want to sink into him because anything else would be too far away. And it's in those moments that she'll remember how Gokou had inspired emotion somewhat similar and how Vegita had been the one to crush the breath from her with his grip.  
  
Even when they aren't there anymore, they're still _there_ and she hates them for it because--despite all the poignant backwash--she loves Gohan too. She loves him so much sometimes that she can't even remember a time she didn't and suddenly she's a teenager again and everything is bright and scary and _new_ and she just wants to hide and be hidden.  
  
And Gohan is more than happy to hide her.

* * *

She has a vision of Gohan's death.  
  
She keeps it close to her heart because she knows that it's only really a matter of time and this is the reminder because no one stays and he's going to die because he's too much like his father, and his father had left--  
  
So she imagines his death at least three times a day.  
  
While she's in her lab she thinks he'll die from an infection because she can't get to him in time. Or because he's stupid and doesn't tell her until it's too far gone and she's not a fucking _doctor_ and she needs to know _before_ it gets to that point--  
  
While she's making dinner she'll think that he dies of internal injuries. She imagines ribs and lungs and heart collapsing inward from a hit, twisting and twining and pushing together like currents in a whirlpool, and killing him as they crumple.  
  
While she kisses him and draws him into the space between her arms and her thighs, she envisions his last breath rattling into her mouth and his last warmth sinking into her blood. _This is how it will end,_ she tells herself. _So remember and don't get too attached because you know you won't survive this time._  
  
But she can't help but become attached. She can't help but fall a little more in love with the slopes of his scared cheeks, and with the tiny valley at the curve of his hip, and with the stretch of kissable skin between his knee and his groin. She can't help but fall a more little in love with these things every day and in the process falls just a little more in love with Gohan because these things are all _him_. The idea that he can vanish from her life like--Vegita, _Gokou_--everything else has, well, it makes her dizzy.  
  
_Remember,_ she tells herself desperately even though she knows it's already too late, remember and don't--fall more in love? Tell him that you can't _breathlivethink_ when he's not there--that the thought of his loss unmakes her?  
  
It does.  
  
So she kisses him and hopes that he understands the words her beating heart speaks because she will never be able to voice them.

* * *

She feels the pressure of his looming end most keenly when she's doing something silly and domestic.  
  
She chokes then because there is a long-buried part in her that still wants to believe in wishes and dragons and wants to believe that this will all turn out in their favour and that she will have the happily ever after that she's always understood existed. It's that same part of her protests her pessimism even though the rest of her soul knows that his death is inevitable. He is too much like his father, in that respect.  
  
So in this twilight world of burning sun and wasted land she watches for the day when he will go out and not come back because this revelation of his demise is also a prophesy of her own death.  
  
And she has so much to do before then.

* * *

Her son is an intelligent boy: eerily so. Had there still been a world left, she is sure that he would be in the top three-percent or so of all the minds in society. But sometimes she wishes he were less curious.  
  
He has questions, of course, about his father and about the other warriors that the androids had killed. And she tries to answer his questions freely but there are still things too sore for her to touch on.  
  
Like, _what was my father like?_  
  
He was an arrogant, noble man who died just the way he wanted.  
  
He was a mean, nasty sonuvabitch who didn't give a crap that he just upped and _died_ when she _told_ him that they were too strong for him.  
  
He was a sarcastic, sardonic, _funny_ man who knew just what she wanted even when she didn't.  
  
He was ... well loved. Just not well liked.  
  
_What was your father like?_  
  
But she can never verbalize it. When she looks into her son's blue eyes--blue eyes that only differentiate from a dead man's by colour, she just can't find the right words even when they are already in her throat.  
  
So instead she just says, _he was your father and I cared about him and then he died. _  
  
What she doesn't add is, _he died just like every other man I've cared for,_ because she doesn't want to jinx her son who she might very well love the most openly out of any man she has ever loved. But this seems to be enough for Trunks and he will drift of into a daydream of how he and his father and his Gohan defeat the horrible robots and save the world and his mother.  
  
As he grows older he starts to ask about Gokou too, because Gohan is really closer to a father than any of them will admit, and naturally the boy is curious about who could have created such a man. When he first asks her what he was like, it all rushes back and she nearly falls.  
  
Thank god Gohan is there to catch her.

* * *

It came to her like a blow to the head, which is sort of fitting because Trunks had hit her and she had passed out and--well--then, when she regained herself, she'd snapped at him and he'd (being the cheeky little bastard he is) retorted that he was sorry but he couldn't turn back time now, could he?  
  
_(If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?  
  
I'd wish for time.)_  
  
That's _it._  
  
It starts out simple enough and she can see in her head all the silly movies she has ever seen about time travel and parallel universes and Grandfather paradoxes and she knows it's a long shot. But she also knows if anyone can do it she can because she has survived the end of the world.  
  
She doesn't tell any one of this idea. Not yet, not quite yet, because she knows that if she does tell them, tell Gohan, he'll get this look on his face because he'll be thinking _she wants to turn it all back because I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not who she wants; because I am not my father._ Because for all that he may be one of the strongest men on earth, he is still so naive and can get so _hurt_ by things.  
  
So she just makes the blue prints.  
  
And she hides them in a drawer.  
  
And it's just a theory anyway. And it probably wouldn't work. Maybe. Most likely.  
  
And she knows she's just lying to herself.  
  
She will not work on the time machine while Gohan is alive. She will not make him think that she loves him any less than she does because she'd played _that_ game with his father and see how well that turned out.

* * *

_You loved him, didn't you?_  
  
Oh god. Yes, Yes. A million times yes. I don't want to talk about it. I can't talk to _you_ about it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. _I ... cared about him, a lot._  
  
_He talked about you. I guess you'd know that. But he really thought the world of you._  
  
Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? He's dead and I was stupid and, and--_Really?_  
  
_Yeah. I can still remember when he was first bringing me to meet you all. He was so excited to see you again._  
  
I miss him. I miss them all. I don't want to remember them anymore. _I was so surprised to see you; he hadn't told anybody that he was married. Or that he had a kid._  
  
_Well, actually, he had. He just hadn't told--_  
  
I want to die. Why is this so familiar? _Me._  
  
_He loved you. Please don't get upset._  
  
How can I not? When I was so fucking stupid; I thought he'd always be there and I never thought that I'd lose him. _I'm not._  
  
_You are. And I know why he did, loved you that is. Because ... I do too._  
  
Why do I let these Son men do this to me? Why can't you see that you just want comfort because you can't really care about me--I'm too _old._ And I'm too hard. And you make me think of your father, sometimes._ Gohan ..._  
  
_Don't_ do _that._  
  
Only ... _Do what?_  
  
_That._  
  
Only, when I look at you ... _That what?_  
  
_Treat me like a fucking child. I am not my father. I'm not stupid. I know what I'm doing. _  
  
You _don't._ If you did we wouldn't be having this conversation. But when you hold me ... _I know you do._  
  
_But you don't. And I don't know how to explain it to you so that you understand._  
  
Only, when you look at me and when you hold me the only man I can see is _you,_ you silly boy.

* * *

There is a fine line between living and surviving and when Gohan dies (_stupid, stupid, stupid fucking boy!_) she feels that she has teetered off the knife-edge she'd lived on and can now be classified as a walking corpse. Everything is irrelevant now and so she just sits stoically at the bedside of her sleeping son, the last living man on earth. Well, that's hyperbole, she knows, but it feels that way.  
  
And who the fuck is going to argue with her? No one, that's who--no one because there is no one left and she is alone and--  
  
And this is ten times worse than when Gokou died because unrequited love, for all that it's love, is still unrequited. It's hard to miss something that she never had, and she manages that well enough.  
  
But Gohan's loss is different.  
  
Gohan is not unrequited. Gohan is--_was_--very, very much requited and now it just hurts so bloody much that she feels like a bag of glass; all jagged and sharp-edged and sticking out of her skin because this is something too big to hold in. Because this--this is having the insides of her body burned to ash. This is trying to take a breath when she's not able to breathe. This is--  
  
Loss.  
  
Grief.  
  
Death. This is going to be the end of her.

* * *

She remembers her Greek myths and she remembers Cassandra the most.  
  
She feels a kinship with the fabled seer because, like Cassandra, she too is not able to save her Troy. She saw what would happen and she ignored it; she let Gokou die and then there was nothing, no one, who could ever save her or the world.  
  
Unlike Cassandra, however, she is going to do something about it.

* * *

It was the third death that ruined them all.  
  
She knows that--if Gokou had lived--none of this would have happened. She knows that Gohan wouldn't have died and Vegita wouldn't have gotten himself killed and the world would still be whole and there would still be life and she wouldn't have fallen in love with Gohan.  
  
God. She would never have fallen in love with Gohan.  
  
This is the real reason that she never started the machine during his life, and she won't hesitate to admit it now. She _wants_ to have loved him. She doesn't even want to imagine a universe were she had not loved him and been loved by him.  
  
But that's exactly what she's going to do.

* * *

If she could turn back the clock and fix the world even if it meant destroying all she holds dear, would she?  
  
Yes.  
  
She makes her decision while she searches for her son and her lover in the shattered cities, praying that they are still alive without the hope that they actually are. She sees the blinding light of an explosion and she knows right then and there that the androids are back and that, somehow, Trunks and Gohan are involved because she has always known when something was wrong. It is something she can feel in the air.  
  
So she makes her choice as she speeds to find them, and she chooses to raze this reality in order to remake the one that should have been. The one in which she doesn't fall in love with Gohan, and where Gokou doesn't die, and she lives with her son and her sort-of husband. She can't imagine living in a world were she doesn't love Gohan, but she sure as hell will if it means that he lives.  
  
If she can save her son and this wonderful dark youth, she will move heaven and hell. If she can save them, then that has got to be worth any cost.  
  
When she finds them, when she sees those dark eyes still as ice and that slack unsmiling mouth, she dies for a moment. And it's a different death than the ones she'd died for his father. It's the start of a silent countdown, ticking away the minutes left of her life.  
  
Son Gohan has died.  
  
Son Gohan is dead.  
  
Son Gohan is--God, it doesn't matter how she tries to put it; it just sounds _wrong._  
  
She looks into her son's watery blue gaze and sees grief so heavy and familiar that she gathers him in her arms as he weeps for the loss of the only father he has ever known. And it is only for his sake that she doesn't reprise her performance from an eon ago and try to drown herself with tears. Trunks exhausts himself and as she packs him into her truck, he asks her the question that she has been dreading; he asks her how they can ever survive now, without such an integral part of their life.  
  
She doesn't fucking _know._  
  
But she isn't going to tell this child that. So she lies. And he believes her.  
  
_It'll be okay,_ she whispers because if she were to raise her voice she is sure that she'd breakdown weeping right there.  
  
It will not be okay. It will never be okay. But she might be able to make it _right._

* * *

It takes three years because she is rusty and there is other work to do besides, and of course, her plans are only _theory_ so it takes some time and testing to finally get them right. It takes three years, and in those three years she still hasn't forgotten.  
  
And that's all right because she shouldn't forget. She shouldn't forget that she has loved and lost that love and loved again only to lose that joy as well. If she forgets then it devalues everything. So she will not forget, but she will remake the world so that it never happened.  
  
But now it is ready, this ugly, cumbersome machine that will slip between the corridors of now and then and take her back to the place, the time that twisted it all up.  
  
Seventeen years is a lot to erase.  
  
And she doesn't really want to erase it anyway.  
  
It has taken her a lifetime and a half to figure this out. It's taken her a wasted existence to realize that even when something hurts so damn much it leaves her with a gut full of glass and tears, she still wants it. She _wants_ to keep this soursweet memory of the boy she loved and the man she never could and the husband who knew her inside out. She wants to live out the rest of her few years in this twilight wasteland, waiting for the moment when the sickle swings for her.  
  
But she won't.  
  
It has taken three years plus seventeen more and three deaths to finally get it into her head that _she can't always do what she wants._  
  
Even a day ago she was still hesitant--still unsure if she was unselfish enough to do what she knew was right, instead of what she wanted. However now as she holds the hand of her son (her stupid, _wonderful_ son who pitted himself against their friendly neighbourhood demons and _lost_ like she knew he would because he just can't compete without someone he respects to measure himself against), she eradicates any indecision and steels herself for the only option. Because otherwise he will lose and lose and lose again because without someone--_Gokou_--else one boy alone can not hope to win this war.  
  
She must unmake this reality, regardless of what it costs her.

* * *

_I don't know how I made it home alive ... _(1)  
  
Once awake, Trunks is humbled and he turns unhappy eyes to her. _You're lucky, that's how. Just like me._ Except it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with the fact that she'd raced after him in one of her still working trucks and gotten there in time to make sure he didn't die on her. Like Vegita had. And Gohan.  
  
Trunks is a smart boy and he has none of his father's ego--for which she is eternally grateful--so he does not argue now and simply agrees to try the blasted machine as soon as he can move.  
  
Thank God.  
  
The relief that floods her is unfamiliar and she releases a breath that has been lodged in her throat since he'd rejected her idea (_I think I'm strong enough to beat the androids now. We don't have to go study them in the past!_) and bolted towards the last-reported location of the dolls. If it came down to it, she'd go herself, but that is her absolute last resort. Because she wants her son to be safe, even if only for a little while. And because she wants him to see what the world should be like, and not what it is. Because she wants to give him a chance to see the people that he never got to know.  
  
They _must_ do this. It hadn't occurred to her that Trunks would rebel against the plan because it she'd forgotten that Trunks, brilliant boy that he is, would also realize in rewriting their past that they'd have to decimate his future, or at least the only one he'd ever known, and it certainly hadn't crossed her mind that he might not want to.  
  
_First you'll go back and give Gohan's dad his medicine. Everything starts there._ And dies there. Because she still can't come out and just say Gokou's name because of the ache that bloomed in her chest. Because saying Gohan's name even now, three years later, still hurts like it did the morning after he died. Because she knows that, like Gokou's death and Vegita's death, she will hurt from it until the day she dies. Because once that medication is in his hands, all of this will never have happened. She isn't certain whether she wants to laugh or cry. _I don't think the world would've turned out this way if he hadn't died ..._  
  
_Was he that powerful?_  
  
It's a valid question especially considering that neither she nor Gohan had every really given him any details. But it still makes her ache with remembrances. _Yeah, he was ..._ (But that's not it at all. How can she explain this to him?) _But that's not all. He was the kind of guy who made you believe that he could make things right, no matter how terrible the situation seemed ..._  
  
... Because he cared more about everyone else then about himself.  
  
Because she loved him.  
  
She doesn't say it so it goes unsaid, but her son seems to understand and smiles softly at her anyway. She knows they will fix this.  
  
Even if it destroys them both.

* * *

She has only lived for near half a century and yet she is older than Methuselah  
  
She has lost her son to the canals of time. She has lost her husband to war and dust. She has lost her boyish lover to a miscalculation and she has lost his father, the man she adored, to a sort of instantaneous mistake.  
  
She has lost her youth, and her home, and her world.  
  
This is what it feels like to have nothing left. She has lost everything now.  
  
And she would do it again in a heartbeat.

* * *

**(1)** The resulting italicized text/conversation between Buruma and Trunks is taken directly from the manga short story _Trunks the story: The Lone Warrior_ written by Akira Toriyama 


	3. Epilogue: Ad Infinitum

**Disclaimer: **See Part I

**Spoilers:** ...You've read this far, so a spoiler warning is sort of asinine, isn't it?

**Warnings:** My writing disintergrates even more! And the whole mirai-Bulma thing is resolved. Somewhat. I suggest listening to _Smile Like You Mean It_ by The Killers while reading, because it's scarily close to the tone of the fic.

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* * *

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**III. Epilogue: Ad Infinitum**  
  
_Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.  
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;  
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,  
She would not love.  
  
**"A Leave-taking," Algernon Charles Swinburne**_

* * *

The end of the world comes far more quietly than it should, especially considering that she'd thought it had already happened seventeen years ago when the best of men died from a heart attack.  
  
But one can only live and learn.  
  
The world ends when her son returns and she thinks for a moment that the entire thing is unsuccessful because he was gone for less than a moment, a breath, a blink, and now he's back with a stunned, heart-broken look on his face.  
  
_I--Gokou, Dad--Nothing's_ changed.  
  
And that's when she figures it out.  
  
Everything has changed, but not for them, and not for her. You can't unmake the present by reweaving the past, but you can make a new present. It will never change for her. She will always be the woman who loved Son Gohan before he died and she will always be the woman who promised Gokou that she wouldn't bring him back and keeps her promise, and she will always be the woman who sent her son to change the future without changing anything.  
  
Everything's changed just not in this timeline.

* * *

There have been many different ideas about time travel and the results thereof, but none of them were right, or even close in many cases. She wishes absently, because that's the only way one can wish now, that there is still some sort of society that she could present a paper to because she knows that it would be grand to see all those grey faces turning green with envy.  
  
Time travel. She's always thought that if you actually made it back to some point in time, anything she'd do would change--or even completely decimate--the reality that she'd been in originally, so in effect the time/space continuum is always in flux, always reshaping itself so it adjusted to any paranormal events. That way there was never more than one outcome, and never more than one future.  
  
But that is wrong, obviously.  
  
When the door to the ship had opened and Trunks had jumped down, devastation clear on his face, her first thought was; _I fucked up. I did it wrong. I can't _fix_ this._ And panic uncurled long, chilly fingers up her spine.  
  
But she hadn't.  
  
_You looked happy._  
  
The words were a stab to her heart. And they proved beyond any doubt that she'd been as successful in this endeavour as she is in everything else. She'd looked _happy._ She wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously and that told her that _she'd done it._ She'd rewritten history.  
  
And she didn't even remember it.

* * *

The sky should break, she thinks. It should twist and crack and split open like a too-ripe plum because the end of the world has already come and gone and it shouldn't still be standing.  
  
When she thinks of it as fatalistically as that, _she_ shouldn't be standing either.  
  
So she fantasizes that if she were to look away once the sky should shatter into fragments and rain down upon her head. And she wouldn't see it coming because how can you see pieces of the sky? Would they be blue and jagged, or clear and wide, or thin and sharp? Would they slice her to pieces or crush her flat?  
  
The sky should break because the longer she looks at it the more she thinks she's living on borrowed time. The sky should break because she has felt too much for it to be contained under this thin shell.  
  
The sky should part and show her the infinite lines of time tunneling through the air because now this world, this reality, is no longer an option. Now that she knows what to look for she can nearly see them--she can nearly see each little future birthing which each sigh of breath. There is a new future and she thinks if she looks hard enough she can just about see it.  
  
Which one, she wonders idly, will live and grow and maybe become their new future, because now that she knows that there's another Earth (not ravaged) and another Gokou (not dead) and another Vegita (still a bastard) and another Gohan (not mangled) she knows that there will be one, regardless. And that is a comfort like nothing else because she has never been too terribly religious.  
  
Still, she can't help but be a little jealous of this other woman who is her-but-not, and who can see all of the people that she has ever loved day in and out. She just can't help it because she is certain that in some other timeline she is loved by or loving Gohan, or she is berating Vegita while fixing dinner, or she is under the stars with Gokou on a journey once again.  
  
And, anyway, even if that her-but-not exists she will _never_ have the same memories that she has. She will never know or understand the aching and the wanting and the loss and the love that she has felt, for all that they are from the same person sometime long ago. That she will never regret.  
  
But the sky should break because she can see it cracking already and now there is only the waiting left.  
  
And she has never been a patient woman.

* * *

Time is like a tree, she figures now. Her son sleeps restlessly on the couch, a blanket drawn over him. He is disappointed with his venture because there is no change to their world. He is still less powerful than the androids and Gohan is still dead.  
  
She is so proud of him it hurts.  
  
Because he'd _tried,_ which is more than she'd ever done and even though he thinks he fail he really hasn't. He has managed to change their past while retaining their present.  
  
_So time is like a tree,_ she tells him, tries to reassure him that he has made a difference, a dent. She can see a stubborn lack of comprehension in his eyes, not because he doesn't understand but because he doesn't want to. _It has this one huge taproot off of which everything else branches. There is the one, prime timeline but if you deviate--say turn left instead of turn right--it opens up a new, smaller root.  
  
The roots keep on growing, as some choices feed some of the roots and not others different roots crop up and others whither and, eventually, a couple of the roots (having been feed by certain smaller timelines that supported that particular outcome) would become more prominent, maybe even as big as the original taproot. So that leaves several different realities running parallel to each other.  
  
And it also means that even if you make a change to the original root, it won't change the one you came from,_ he finishes for her sourly.  
  
Yes: _it won't change the one you came from. _  
  
Somewhere all the probabilities that fed this timeline are withering and soon, she's sure, this will be just a dead end; an un-possibility. This will be one of the futures that never comes to fruition, and she is fiercely glad for it. She _glad_ that Gohan will never love her and she'll never have her heart broken by his death. She tells herself she's glad because--  
  
Because, because she knows if she tells herself otherwise she will just weep and weep and weep and never stop.  
  
Trunks has done the impossible; he has let her keep her selfish memories of Gohan while giving him back his life. Now they will all have a life and a family and even if not with one another, she will _not_ complain.  
  
Because she is allowed to keep the cool nights and the warm days and the hands and tongues and kisses that she'd stolen. She will never complain even though her heart is still broken.  
  
She has saved the world and saved a boy, and not her world and not her boy, but it is enough.

* * *

__

_This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper.  
**"Hollow Men," T. S. Eliot**_

* * *

****

**Afterthoughts:**  
  
Not much to say on this one. This is sort of how I wanted the Mirai timeline to get done, and it's sort of how I saw it in my head. The mind is a terrifying thing, eh?  
  
Because I like Buruma, and I like Gokou, and I like them together. And I like Gohan too. And I _do_ think that something happened between Buruma/Bulma and Gohan in the Mirai future.  
  
I hope I didn't downplay Vegita's importance because I really do like him. Really and truly. And him together with Buruma is all good; but even so, I don't really sense the same affection between those two in the Mirai timeline (but that may just have been me) that I did between her and Gokou, or even her and Gohan.  
  
I also hope that I didn't screw up Chichi because while she isn't my favourite character, she is _so_ important to the series that I just couldn't ignore her.  
  
I really did try to keep this as close to cannon as I dared, but because in all honesty I haven't watched or read my DBZ manga/anime in so long, I'm sure I've screwed something up somewhere along the line. But I hope that it didn't affect the enjoyment (if any) that you folks got out of reading.

Thanks and goodnight!


End file.
